First off let me start by saying I was one of the people who got permanently banned for this. I myself made 150 mithril snowflake rings, and salvaged them for ectos.
As a trader who used to craft rares, and then salvaging them for ectoplasm (making rare silk epaults) this is a real shock to me that they decided snowflakes were an exploit.

I was curious about the reason the recipe was even taken out in the first place. As an avid market player I had noticed the market had already nearly reached equilibrium by the time they took it out. So naturally I went to the forums to ask some questions and share the real numbers and data. I was quite surprised that John Smith, the Guild Wars 2 economist seemed to agree that the margin I was trading at was not considered an exploit at all, and that it was something else people were doing with Wintersday Recipes.

Today I was banned for exploiting for using the recipe and margins I expressed in the statement he quoted. Doing exactly what he claimed was not an exploit.
I had the bad fortune of crafting these rings when I could have just crafted silk shoulderpads and still got nearly the same return. In fact you can still make the shoulderpads right now and get this kind of return.

It’s true those players who got in early before the snowflakes went to 25-30 silver made a lot of money, but just banning anyone who made them is extremely unfair. I paid 16 silver per salvage, you can still buy a lot of rares for less than 16-17 silver and salvage them. This is clearly not an exploit, and even John Smith agreed with me.
Obviously I am a little upset I put a lot of time into both Guild Wars 1 and Guild Wars 2, and have always been impressed with their leadership. This latest choice is really making me question what has happened over at Anet. I hope they are just confused and don’t fully understand how many people they are finding guilty by default.

I’ve seen the numbers, and the damage to the economy could have been substantial, if the exploit wasn’t closed down. People whose accounts were terminated were the worst offenders.

Any time you take one thing and can make two, and then four, and then 16… ya gotta know that’s just wrong. And to do it hundreds and hundreds of times? That’s call “exploitation,” my friend, and that’s against the User Agreement, the Rules of Conduct, and everything that is holy.

I know the OP will disagree. But we’ve been more than kind, in the past, and everyone needs to own up to his/her errors and recognize: We all are part of the game economy, and those who exploit it are hurting the rest of us.